The one where Football Scotland get their wires crossed

I happened to spot the latest story on Football Scotland — in which they claim that Borussia Dortmund reaching the Semi Finals of the Champions League poses a threat to Rangers qualifying automatically for the League Stage. They go into a great deal of detail, and refer to Scotland’s loss of an automatic place in the 2025/26 tournament, but unfortunately, they’ve got it very, very wrong.

Let me explain why.

The winner of this season’s Champions League affects next season’s qualifiers, not 2025/26

This should be obvious. Whoever wins the 2023/24 Champions League gets an automatic place in the 2024/25 Champions League, not 2025/26. So if Dortmund were to beat PSG, then the winner of the other semi-final (this is written three hours before the other quarter-finals kick off), it wouldn’t affect Rangers one iota where Dortmund came in this season’s Bundesliga. If Dortmund were to win the 2024/25 Champions League, and come, say, sixth in that season’s Bundesliga, it might pose a problem. But that’s not going to be an issue for another twelve months.

The winner of the Champions League affects next season’s Champions Path

The rule has indeed changed going forward: until now, if the winner of the Champions League also qualified for the following season’s competition domestically, the spare place was given to the 11th placed national association. Now, it’s the team in the Champions Path of qualifying who gets it. The key phrase being Champions Path.

There are no circumstances in which Rangers, or any Scottish club, would find themselves on next season’s Champions Path: Scotland still gets an automatic place in the 2024/25 League Stage for the Premiership Champions. And the second-placed team, by definition, can’t end up on the Champions Path. Therefore, the outcome of this season’s Champions League does not, and will not, affect the prospects of any Scottish team. At the moment, Shakhtar Donetsk are currently top of the Ukrainian league and are the highest ranked league leader according to the UEFA Club Co-efficient.

Next season, this might come up: Rangers are currently the highest ranked team from a league that doesn’t get an automatic place in 2025/26. They’re currently level on points with Shakhtar and make a gain of eleven points relative to the Ukrainian outfit when 2019/20 co-efficient points are taken out of the calculation, as they will be next season. But I reiterate: Dortmund winning this season does not affect that.

Rangers need to keep their eye on the Europa League winner, and a few other things, instead

What Football Scotland are getting mixed up with is the outcome of this season’s Europa League. The winner of that gets an automatic spot in the League Stage of next season’s Champions League as well, and that goes to the team with the highest co-efficient starting in either qualifying path, unless that team overtakes someone from their own domestic league.

So for example, if Slavia Prague came second in the Czech league and had the highest co-efficient of any qualifier, they couldn’t get a bye to the League Stage as they’d be overtaking their domestic league champions who start in the Second Qualifying Round.

But that’s not an issue for Scotland either this season: this time, the League winners go into next season’s League Stage so the second placed team, who start in the Third Qualifying Round, are eligible if they have the co-efficient points. In a year’s time, the winners will go into the Play-off, so Rangers would be blocked from automatic qualification in any circumstances if anyone else wins the 2024/25 Premiership. Whoever wins the Europa League won’t change that.

Back to this season, though: Rangers can qualify automatically for the Champions League if they come second, as long as they’re the highest ranked team in the qualifiers and the winner of the Europa League also qualifies for the League Stage of next season’s Champions League domestically, and there are only four teams who could potentially face a qualifier and outrank Rangers. So in leagues across Europe, the following things need to happen:

Paris Saint-Germain need to come anywhere but fourth in Ligue 1 (or fifth if France picked up a European Performance Spot). This is happening: PSG are currently top of the league and could secure an automatic spot in the League Stage this weekend.

Ajax need to come anywhere but third in the Eredivisie. Again, this is happening: they’re currently fifth. They are twelve points off third place with four games to go, so it’s not mathematically impossible right now, but it’s not very likely.

Neither Benfica nor Porto can come second in Liga Portugal. This is where it falls down: Benfica are in second place: seven points behind Sporting and 11 ahead of Porto and Braga, with five games left. As things stand, Benfica are watching the Europa League most anxiously.

But again, they’re watching this season’s Europa League, not the Champions League in any season or next season’s edition of any competition. Dortmund winning the UCL this season won’t change anything for them. Or Rangers.

All of this can be hard to follow at times, but we rely on journalists to check the facts and get it right. Mashing Scotland’s drop down the rankings and Dortmund winning a Quarter-Final together and hoping it makes a story simply isn’t the way. Fans deserve better from their journalists than that.

UPDATE (18/04): It would appear that Football Scotland have simply deleted the story. Better that it be taken down than left up, for sure, but it should never have been put up in the first place, and you have to wonder how many people read it and won’t see a correction. It reeks of poor practice that you wouldn’t expect from a major journalistic player like REACH plc…